84 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



this in a wild state also sometimes even the swallows 

 for marked birds have been known to return to the 

 same place to breed year after year. Some large 

 birds, too, like gannets, which do not breed until they 

 are several years old, and then only rear one young 

 one at a time, obviously must live at least five or six 

 years on the average, otherwise the species would 

 have died out. It may, in fact, be taken as an 

 inevitable rule that the earlier any kind of bird 

 breeds, and the more young it produces, the more 

 quickly it will die. 



INDUSTRIOUS THRUSHES. 



No shadow of impending doom, however, seems 

 to cloud the spirits of our cheery friends in feathers 

 as they set to work to demonstrate the briefness of 

 their lives. The inclement weather which killed the 

 swallows did not interfere with the supply of worms, 

 or prevent the fledgling thrushes' feathers from grow- 

 ing ; so during the last week or two almost every 

 evergreen in the garden has been discharging young 

 birds on to the lawn, where they sit in sheltered 

 corners like frogs, and chirrup for worms. And 

 already their parents are hard at work again, getting 

 ready for the next family. This causes fresh alarums 

 and excursions in the shrubberies ; for though thrushes 

 often tolerate each other as near neighbours their 

 nests have sometimes been found so close as to be 

 actually woven into each other they are often as 

 quarrelsome as blackbirds about their spheres of in- 

 fluence. They fight, however, very differently. While 

 blackbirds advance and retire, set to partners, and 



